Book Description

In "Center of the Universe," God struggles to balance the demands of his career with the needs of his long-term girlfriend. In "Magical Mr. Goat," a young girl's imaginary friend yearns to become "more than friends." In "Unprotected," an unused prophylactic recalls his years spent trapped inside a teen boy's wallet. The stories in Simon Rich's new book are bizarre, funny, and yet...relatable. Rich explores love's many complications-losing it, finding it, breaking it, and making it-and turns the ordinary into the absurd. With razor-sharp humor and illustrations, and just in time for Valentine's Day, Rich takes readers for an exhilarating, hilarious ride on the rollercoaster of love.

In "Center of the Universe," God struggles to balance the demands of his career with the needs of his long-term girlfriend. In "Magical Mr. Goat," a young girl's imaginary friend yearns to become "more than friends." In "Unprotected," an unused prophylactic recalls his years spent trapped inside a teen boy's wallet. The stories in Simon Rich's new book are bizarre, funny, and yet...relatable. Rich explores love's many complications-losing it, finding it, breaking it, and making it-and turns the ordinary into the absurd. With razor-sharp humor and illustrations, and just in time for Valentine's Day, Rich takes readers for an exhilarating, hilarious ride on the rollercoaster of love.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Simon Rich is outrageously, lavishly gifted -- Caitlin Moran A James Thurber for our times, in Borges' suit wearing Flann O'Brien's hat -- Ian McMillan BBC Radio 3 The Verb Brilliant: a kind of modern version of Woody Allen's Without Feathers for anyone who's been in love ... topsy-turvy imaginative, riotously funny, hugely insightful ... Rich has a wisdom about male-female interaction that most have to wait far, far longer than 28 years to gain. -- Tom Cox Observer A collection of sweet stories full of whimsical, gently moving tales of love and loss, thwarted come-ons and doomed crushes... Put it in your pocket and take it out whenever you need a five minute break from the tedium of everyday. -- Lynn Enright The Gloss Most original and highly amusing. Rich manages to turn the banal into the absurd... hilarious and touching... and impossible to put down. A perfect cheer-up for the romantically challenged! -- Rachel Glover Image The Last Girlfriend On Earthis silly, surreal, sometimes sad and always laugh-out-loud funny. This collection will have you giggling/crying/squirming in recognition, and wondering what exactly Simon Rich has eaten to dream all this stuff up ... This collection pulls off the tough trick of being both heart-warming and hilarious -it's a must-read if you've ever so much as had a crush on someone Heat Pithy, occasionally bonkers... expect any weeping to be of the laughter-induced variety -- David Clack Time Out Truly hilarious -- Observer Eva Wiseman There are many episodes to enjoy ... The scenarios are satisfyingly wide-ranging ... an irreverent pleasure. -- Frank Brinkley Literary Review A laugh-out-loud collection of short stories about that crazy little thing called love. Vogue Australia If you buy only one quirky, surreal collection of comedy short stories about relationships this year, make it Simon Rich's The Last Girlfriend on Earth ... an endlessly inventive, laugh-out-loud book ... It's fairly spooky that Rich, though still in his 20s, has such telling and very humorous insights into the shortcomings and sensitivities of the male psyche ... this is a one-night stand you will definitely want to tell your friends about. Jewish Chronicle The Last Girlfriend on Earth had me giggling out loud -- Emma Sells ELLE A quirky and amusing collection -- Julian Fleming Sunday Business Post The Last Girlfriend on Earth shows off Rich's special talent for finding emotional truth in surreal premises -- Hugh Montgomery Independent on Sunday The Last Girlfriend on Earth and Other Love Stories by Simon Rich is my holiday reading recommendation. Read it on the plane with caution - you will laugh so loud people will think you're having some sort of episode. -- Lauren Laverne ELLE Rich is arguably the wittiest American humourist of his generation. -- Ryan Gilbey Guardian

About the Author

Simon Richis the author of What in God's Name, Ant Farm, Free-Range Chickens, and Elliot Allagash. His work, including some of these stories, has appeared in The New Yorker ("It's always fairly obvious when a 'Shouts and Murmurs' piece in The New Yorker is the product of Simon Rich. Telltale signs include the elegant skewering of adult human behavior, as glimpsed through the eyes of children, animals, spectral beings, or inanimate objects-and the fact that the reader is hunched over laughing." - Joe Berkowitz, Fast Company). He has written film scripts for Lorne Michaels and Judd Apatow, and until recently he was a staff writer at Saturday Night Live; he currently writes for Pixar. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

This book is simple and overall entertaining, but misses the mark on about half of the stories. Some were VERY funny - I really enjoyed the missed dog connections, the condom story, and "I love Girl" to name a few. There were several that were really just sad and not even in a darkly funny way. "I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus" started with dark humor and ended with simple and depressing bitterness.

Good for some tastes maybe, but not one I'll re-read cover to cover. That being said - I will probably recommend for friends to borrow and read the few that were great,but will not suggest that they purchase the book.

I saw Simon Rich at a NY reading and was in tears laughing when Michael Ian Black read the Cave Boy love story. Bought the book and have been equally entertained by the other stories. Impressive range of styles;very creative... solid, witty, and sincere.

I think perhaps this book was a little overhyped. If I came to it with no expectations I might have rated it higher. I found a lot of the stories a little bit shallow or facile. But it was clever and funny and well written.

You may have heard of Simon Rich -- he's a writer for Saturday Night Live (second youngest one ever), and he also frequently writes the Shouts & Murmurs column for The New Yorker. Hell, his Wikipedia page even calls him an "American humorist." Basically, his comedy credentials are well-established, even though dude's not even 30 yet.

In this collection of very short stories, Rich's goofiness is on full display. These 30 stories, each between one and five pages, are about the quirky, often absurd, nature of relationships. Generally, Rich starts with a stereotype or a simple kernel of assumed truth, and riffs it into an entire story. For instance, my favorite story in the collection "Magical Mr. Goat" is about what would happen if a child's "invisible" friend became real and started making uncomfortable advances. When the child fends him off, telling him they should just be friends, and that he'll find someone, the goat exclaims, "That's not true ... You're the only one who can even see me!" THAT's comedy!

Or, another story titled "Sirens of Gowanus" makes fun of dudes who overlook any red flags in a woman when she slows the slightest interest in him. In this case, the woman is a siren who will lure him to her island in the Gowanus Canal, and probably eat him. It had happened before. "You can't judge someone by their past relationships," the guy argues to his buddy. "Like okay, she killed Stanley. But how do you know what was going on between them? You weren't there."

"Center of the Universe" is about God dating a needy woman, who doesn't understand why he can't take time from his job of creating the world to spend more time with her. Yeah, some of these stories may annoy you.

The title story is about one of the last women on Earth, who is in a committed relationship, and who refuses to acknowledge that the President and Brad Pitt requesting "meetings" with her is not because they want to bed her, but only because she's smart and engaging. And she still becomes jealous of one of the other last women on Earth when she thinks the other woman hits on her boyfriend. Really funny!

There are a few duds -- stories in which the cornerstone idea may have just been better as an idea, not a whole story. Rich riffs off the idea that your exgirlfriend's next boyfriend is always evil -- and builds a story about a guy's exgirlfriend dating Hitler. Another story in a similar vein has a guy using a secret government invisibility serum -- and he's supposed to be finding a terrorist, but instead the guy uses his invisibility to stalk his exgirlfriend while she's on a date.

Overall, though, I'd definitely recommend these -- I read them over the course of three weeks or so, just a few here and there. They definitely don't require much mental bandwidth, and for the most part, they're clever, funny, and insightful. You'll definitely do a few "knowing nods," a few chuckles, and a few outright laughs out loud.Read more ›

For starters, there's the one whose narrator, believing himself to be a balloon, leaves the factory to move to a drugstore where he comes into the possession of a young boy who carries him in his wallet for a good many years until at last a girl enters the picture and his/its "moment" comes...or does it? And then there's the one that looks into how the game of love would work if its players were subject to being traded, like the pros. And one about God's girlfriend and the role she played in what He did on "the seventh day." And one about the therapist who referred clients to a $40,000-per-visit "girlfriend repair shop." And then there's a story about the Mommy who slept with Santa Claus. And one about what happens when The Invisible Man encounters his girlfriend's new boyfriend. And a story about the guy who started the Occupy movement, who decides to employ that strategy to get the woman he idolizes to go out with him. And the one that delves into that scariest of all days, the day when one's girlfriend demands to know where the relationship is going. Plus 22 more weirdly wild and crazy imaginings from the mind of a twenty-something former Saturday Night Live staff writer, New Yorker contributor and son of former New York Times columnist Frank Rich. If you're looking for witty and wacky short-short stories that raise eyebrows and induce sly smiles of recognition, this collection could be just the thing.